Nice. Well, looks like the renewable Nirvanas, Germany and Greece are accomplishing what climate skeptics said they would. They’ve impoverished the citizenry so much that the poor citizens are forced to resort to technology thousands of years old.

They’re gaining a “twofer!”

Sadly, this is a double win for the watermelons. They’ve accomplished the Luddite goal of everyone going back in time and because they go back in time with technology use, they’re accomplishing their Malthusian goal of killing people off. These are necessary steps towards their other goal of totalitarian Marxism.

The WSJ has an article about how people in Greece are going to government lands to chop down trees for heat. (the link is a Google search for those w/o a WSJ subscription)

EGALEO, Greece—While patrolling on a recent cold night, environmentalist Grigoris Gourdomichalis caught a young man illegally chopping down a tree on public land in the mountains above Athens.

When confronted, the man broke down in tears, saying he was unemployed and needed the wood to warm the home he shares with his wife and four small children, because he could no longer afford heating oil.

“It was a tough choice, but I decided just to let him go” with the wood, said Mr. Gourdomichalis, head of the locally financed Environmental Association of Municipalities of Athens, which works to protect forests around Egaleo, a western suburb of the capital.

You despicable scumbags! How many years did the watermelons take off the lives of those children? The story continues……

Tens of thousands of trees have disappeared from parks and woodlands this winter across Greece, authorities said, in a worsening problem that has had tragic consequences as the crisis-hit country’s impoverished residents, too broke to pay for electricity or fuel, turn to fireplaces and wood stoves for heat.

As winter temperatures bite, that trend is dealing a serious blow to the environment, as hillsides are denuded of timber and smog from fires clouds the air in Athens and other cities, posing risks to public health.

Well played, you econutter Fascists. Your actions and advocacy is destroying the environment. Is there anything that a watermelon can get right? (rhetorical)

Now some would say that’s just Greece and they’re a backwards nation with no money anyway. But, then some watermelon would have to explain what is happening in Germany.

When the mercury falls, the theft of wood in the country’s woodlands goes up as people turn to cheaper ways to heat their homes.

“The forest is open for everyone to enter and people just think they can help themselves, but they can’t!” says Enno Rosenthal, head of the forest farmers association in the northeastern German state of Brandenburg…….

The problem has been compounded this winter by rising energy costs. The Germany’s Renters Association estimates the heating costs will go up 22 percent this winter alone. A side effect is an increasing number of people turning to wood-burning stoves for warmth. Germans bought 400,000 such stoves in 2011, the German magazine FOCUS reported this week. It marks the continuation of a trend: The number of Germans buying heating devices that burn wood and coal has grown steadily since 2005, according to consumer research company GfK Group.

That increase in demand has now also boosted prices for wood, leading many to fuel their fires with theft.

Rosenthal said just last weekend someone stole an entire bundle of oak wood worth about €150 ($199) from a private forest in the town of Neuruppin outside of Berlin. “Many foresters come back to their wood piles and find them a little smaller or even gone,” he says.

The reality is, the renewable dream has turned into a nightmare. People can’t afford to heat and eat, so they are making desperate choices they should not have been forced to make.

There should be a day of accountability here on earth. Justice needs to be sought for these merchants of poverty and death.

The picture shows a tree cut down with a chain saw! I saw many of those after I cut them down.
Wood is dirtier than even coal as an energy source.
Germany is showing their ignorance with allowing all those stoves to be sold in that country.
I used a wood stove for all the time I lived on the farm and came to realize it cost about the same as using electric heat because of the cost of fuel for the chain saws and vehicles used to haul the wood also all the labor involved in getting the wood ready to burn.
Having a wood stove in your house is worse for your health than having a smoker in your house, because of the chemicals released during the burning process. Even with the new ones that have a catalytic converter.

…then you’re doin’ it wrong,laddy. You’ve got to work smart ,not hard…been heating with wood for 25 years.I’m still a third of the semi load of cordwood (oak @$600)away from getting more next year ($200per year) which earned a logger friend and a truck driver part of their keep. Add a
5 gallon can of gas and a quart of saw oil per year and the saw (johnsrud)I bought at auction 15 years ago for $45 and given a parts saw. I split with a monster maul (sotz) . Sure it’s energy intensive for about two weeks not counting the air drying on the hayracks before storage…but it leaves plenty of time for this old man to smoke his pipe knowing that he owes no-one and will stay warm until spring when it’s time to put in the garden.I daresay the city-air you’re breathing and chlorinated water you’re drinking won’t kill you any more quickly than the chemicals in the rolling papers (sulpher,yuck😦 )that I eshew,but then, I’m not a neo-Luddite any more than a Malthusian…technology can be your friend if you don’t make it your master.

I don’t think forcing everyone to heat with wood because of impoverishment is optimal. I’m all for heating with wood, I have several times in the past. But, we know most city dwellers know nothing about it. They don’t know how to properly dampen their flue, or proper wood selection, or aging, or chimney maintenance or anything. They’re just trying to stay warm and survive.

In younger days, I used to earn a couple of extra dollars sweeping chimney’s. How some managed not to kill themselves with the smoke or flue fires is beyond me.

agreed….wood that’s not dry is dangerous. I feel for the New Yorkers trying to stay warm
AND the poor folks affected by the European cold-wave
(support global warming,as they say in Alaska)
hypothermia is a bad way to go…and I’ve been that cold before (brrr)
All jammed together the city is a BAD place to be in hard times…you’re better off in the bush.

Yes, I’ve been cold before. I spent some time at Ft. Wainwright (Fairbanks). It was there that I become convinced that hell isn’t hot, it’s cold, and Alaska is the north side of it! Being in a persistent cold is a misery I never want to live again.